(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a waste developer collecting container for use in an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, for storing the developer particles which, of the developer used for developing images of information formed on an electrostatic latent image bearing member, have not been transferred to recording mediums such as recording paper and the like and have been collected as waste developer.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
The developers (called “toner”) used in image forming apparatuses are small-diametric particles, so that there is a fear that the developers have an effect on the human body if users by themselves dispose of them. Therefore, the manufactures have been mandated to take the responsibility for collection and disposal of the developers as industrial waste.
With regard to the handling of such industrial waste, it is not only necessary to take safety measures for the users, but also establish adequate safeguard for the workers in charge of disposal on the manufacture side.
In the image forming apparatuses, to visualize an image of information on a sheet of paper as a recording medium, a visual image is formed first on an electrostatic latent image bearing member (photoreceptor) with a toner as a developer having a color such as black or other colors so as to, and then transferred to the paper. This transfer process, however, is not able to gain a transfer efficiency of 100% but usually yields a transfer efficiency of 80 to 95%.
If a next printing operation is started without the toner remaining on the photoreceptor cleaned, the print quality at the next printing will be degraded. This is why the photoreceptor, after the transfer process, is subjected to a cleaning process in which the leftover toner on the photoreceptor is removed by a cleaning unit.
The toner collected by this cleaning process is brought together into a waste toner box and will be disposed of as stated above.
Taking the environmental issues into account, this container for collection and disposal of the toner should be reused while the waste toner is discarded as industrial waste.
Further, it is impermissible that waste toner should scatter from the container holding waste toner during its transportation, also it should never be the case that waste toner seeps out from the waste toner collecting container attached to the machine and contaminate the machine and the surroundings around the machine.
For this purpose, a waste toner collecting container is required to be able to seal waste toner therein and have hermetic sealability.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Hei 11 No. 288155 (patent literature 1), it is disclosed that, in a re-packaging unit of a used and replaced toner cartridge, in order to prevent toner from scattering from a toner cartridge to which toner is collected, a collecting kit including a seal for sealing the opening through which toner may spill out from the toner cartridge when the cartridge is collected, written operation instructions for describing the re-packaging procedures at collection and/or a label for the address to the collecting site is packed together with the toner cartridge when the product is shipped.
However, the prior art methods, inclusive of the above patent literature 1, suffer the problem that in order to collect the used toner cartridge, the user needs to make an effort to take out the seal from the collecting kit and attach it to the opening through which toner may spill out.
Further, it is troublesome for an unfamiliar user to apply the seal to prevent toner from spilling out even if the person does it referring to the written instructions, hence the remaining toner may scatter and the scattered toner may pollute the user's hands. There still remains the problem that it takes a rather longer time than when a maintenance personnel or other skilled person does the work.